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Belgian police have searched European parliament offices as part of a growing investigation into alleged bribery and corruption, as senior EU leaders warned the credibility of the bloc was at stake. Belgium’s federal prosecutor announced on Monday it

Nasa’s uncrewed Orion capsule is towed away by US navy divers after it landed safely in the Pacific ocean, west of Baja California. It brought to completion the first flight of Nasa’s new lunar programme, which aims to return astronauts to the surfac

Senior steel industry figures rejected claims that their demand for coal drove the government’s divisive decision to sanction the first new UK coalmine for 30 years. Levelling up secretary Michael Gove’s decision to approve the mine at Whitehaven in

A woman waves a smoke flare as striking mail workers and supporters gather in Parliament Square, London, to listen to speeches by union leaders and representatives. Royal Mail workers are staging strikes throughout December in an escalating row over

The time to forgive and forget had passed, the grey-bearded man said, his back to the turquoise Adriatic sea as he gesticulated towards the camera. “Those people who bullied us, who locked us up”, he said, were about to face a reckoning in an “epocha

Perhaps it was the tweed jacket and cravat. Or the medieval title: Heinrich XIII, Prince of Reuß. Either way, the man at the head of a suspected plot to overthrow the German government, exposed in a series of raids last week, was easy to dismiss as a

The Russian shell that struck in the night had taken away the wall of a top-floor apartment, and in its place was freezing air blowing off the Dnieper River – and a view of Europe’s biggest nuclear power station on the other bank. The Zaporizhzhia nu

The victory lap in Moscow began even before the An-148 jet carrying the notorious arms dealer once dubbed the “merchant of death” touched down at Vnukovo airport. Viktor Bout, arrested in 2008, had been returned to Russia more than 14 years after his

Beijing’s abrupt dismantling of zero-Covid controls has been welcomed by economists, even as the country braces itself for the human impact of letting the disease spread through a vulnerable population. The leadership’s U-turn on how it handles the p

Before Covid, few people had heard of respiratory syncytial virus. Increasingly, though, this common cause of pneumonia and bronchiolitis (airway inflammation) is filling up hospital beds In its latest report, the European Centre for Disease Preventi

The surveillance plane eased off the runway and banked west towards the frontline of one of Brazil’s most dramatic environmental and humanitarian crises. Its objective: a clandestine 120km road that illegal mining mafias have carved out of the jungle

For decades, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner dominated Argentina’s political landscape: as a senator, first lady, president and then vice-president. But last week she was sentenced to six years in prison in a verdict which, if upheld on appeal, will b

It was about zero degrees celsius as families piled into Gas Street St Luke’s church cafe, one of Birmingham city council’s designated “warm spaces”, to escape the December cold. Staff said the cafe, just outside the city centre, had been busier than

I have spent much of the past few months feeling furious, and I know many readers have too: a rage driven by the fact that in such a wealthy country there are so many children going to school hungry, so many families sitting freezing in the cold. Rig

This was supposed to be the year Ireland got serious about protecting its bogs but some of those hopes are wafting up in smoke as households burn peat to save on energy bills. The soaring cost of oil and gas has reinvigorated the ancient practice of

A cavernous conference centre in Johannesburg has been prepared for the elective conference of the African National Congress (ANC) party, and the political forecasts are as bad as the meteorological ones. The conference, which runs from 16-20 Decembe

‘Alcohol is a ‘dirty drug’,” says Emily Palmer, a researcher at Imperial College London, who studies hangovers. “It impacts multiple systems in the brain.” Scientists are not exactly sure what is going on in our bodies during a hangover, but they do

Rupert Murdoch rarely has to answer for the alternative realities presented by his hugely profitable US cable network, Fox News. Its conspiratorial claims of a parade of cover ups from the 2012 Benghazi attack to the climate crisis and Covid have bee

FOR THE PAST THREE MONTHS, revolutionary sentiment has been coursing through the cities and towns of the Persian plateau. The agitation was triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, on 16 September after she was arrested by the mo

The news came fast: a judge murdered in cold blood; cartel members attempting a prison break; five people killed at a bar in a popular port city. The surge in violence over a single weekend in Mexico brought headlines that are increasingly familiar a

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES. Last October, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg could barely wait to show the world what he was up to. “Today, we’re going to talk about the metaverse,” he enthused in a slick video presentation. “I want to share what w

There are two extraordinary facts about the COP15 convention on biological diversity, whose members have been meeting in Montreal to discuss the global ecological crisis. The first is that, of the world’s 198 states, 196 are party to it. The second i

Although it would be hard to reach this conclusion from reading any of the thousands of negative articles the couple have generated, when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fell in love, the royal family – and Britain more broadly – was gifted manna from

It’s official. Brexit has caused lasting damage to the UK economy and, with the Tories in denial, Labour needs to lead the way with a new policy agenda. Yet it’s almost a taboo topic: the Conservative government won’t admit it is the case and Labour

Some of the year’s biggest books were the most divisive. In her follow-up to A Little Life, To Paradise, Hanya Yanagihara split the critics with an epic if inconclusive saga of privilege and suffering in three alternative Americas: a genderqueered la

Given the relentlessly grim nature of the news, it’s hardly surprising that escapist cosy crime continues to challenge traditional crime/thriller bestsellers, with Richard Osman’s third Thursday Murder Club mystery, The Bullet That Missed, riding hig

One of the year’s most gripping works focused on a family glued to the TV. Oxygen Mask charts a boy’s panicked thoughts as the pandemic and George Floyd’s death dominate the news. American YA writer Jason Reynolds lets his stream of consciousness uns

There is nothing cautious about Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many by Jeremy Lee. More stories, more illustrations, more wit, more advice, more recipes. The abundance feels contained, though, as does the gregarious, expert and tender writing,

The past few years have left many of us reeling, with events moving so fast that historians and political writers have been scrambling to catch up. Publishing lead times are months long: at least one biography of Liz Truss was scheduled for Christmas

This has been an outstanding year for children’s literature, with conservationist, comic, reflective and adventurous books all finding enthralled readers. In picture books, Britannica’s Baby Encyclop edia by Sally Symes, illustrated by Hanako Clulow,

Rock and pop music has been obsessed with its own past from the start: by 1959, a New York record store called Times Square was doing a roaring trade in what it called “oldies”, selling mid-50s doo-wop singles to teenagers already convinced the golde

Celebrity memoirs often follow the same trajectory: a difficult childhood followed by early professional failure, then dazzling success and redemption. But this year has yielded a handful of autobiographies from famous types determined to mix things

Hana Walker-Brown Walker-Brown takes us on a heartbreaking journey through the human debris of sport, from bereaved families to ex-athletes slowly losing their faculties to dementia. She asks why sports such as football and rugby union have proved so

SPURN POINT East Yorkshire, England, UK It’s possibly odd to suggest this 5km-long finger of sand, marram grass and buckthorn spine pointing toward oblivion in the North Sea is my key foundational landscape. In truth, I’d neglected to visit for 45 ye

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